Paul maintains hold on FBI nominee

The FBI has used domestic drones for surveillance in eight criminal and two national security cases since 2006, an FBI official wrote in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul, who is maintaining his hold of the nominee to lead the agency.

The letter came in response to a list of questions Paul sent to the director about domestic drone use. Paul had said he would delay the nomination of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s potential successor, James Comey, until he received specifics on the domestic drone program.

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Now, Paul says the answers are “insufficient” and he sent a follow-up with additional questions, meaning the hold remains in place. Paul’s been known to get drone answers before, filibustering the nomination of CIA Director John Brennan for 12 hours over the question of whether the government could kill Americans not engaged in combat on U.S. soil.

Stephen Kelly from the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs said drones — or unmanned aerial vehicles — have been used in the United States in “very limited circumstances,” such as locating a missing 5-year-old child held in an underground Alabama bunker earlier this year. Kelley also said the FBI does not arm its drones, nor does it have plans to do so, and does not conduct “bulk surveillance.”

To use drones for surveillance, the FBI must obtain authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration and have surveillance requests reviewed by FBI lawyers to make sure there are no constitutional violations, Kelly wrote.

“Without a warrant, the FBI will not use UAVs to acquire information in which individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment,” Mueller said, adding that the FBI has not yet had to seek such a warrant, given drones’ limited use domestically. Further information could not be disclosed publicly due to its classified nature; Paul also received a second classified letter.

In his follow-up letter to Mueller, Paul asked the FBI for information on the FBI’s internal definition of a “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

“I am concerned that an overbroad interpretation of this protection would enable more substantial information collection on an individual in a circumstance they might not have believed was subject to surveillance,” Paul wrote Thursday. “For that reason, I ask that you provide me the Bureau’s definition of when an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy.”